£ 



THE LEGENDARY AND MYTH-MAKING PROCESS IN 
HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 



By SYDNEY G. FISHER 



Reprinted from 

Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 

Vol. LI, No. 204, April-June, 1912. 



^>°^ 



THE LEGENDARY AND MYTH-MAKING PROCESS IN 
HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 

By SYDNEY G. FISHER. 
{Read Afril iS, igis.) 

Having taken the trouble some years ago to examine the great 
mass of original evidence relating to the American Revolution, the 
contemporary documents, pamphlets, letters, memoirs, diaries, the 
debates in parliament and the evidence obtained by its committees, 
I found that very little use of it had been made in writing our 
standard histories, works like those of Bancroft, Hildreth, Fiske, 
which have been the general guides and from which school books 
and other compilations, as well as public orations, are prepared. 

Others have made the same discovery and have been over- 
whelmed with the same astonishment. About fifteen years ago Mr. 
Charles Kendall Adams, astonished at what he found in the original 
evidence, wrote an article on the subject published in the Atlantic 
Monthly (\o\. 82, page 174), ridiculing the standard histories for 
having abandoned the actualities and the original evidence. Our 
whole conception of the Revolution, he said, would have to be al- 
tered and the history of it rewritten. Within the last year or two 
Mr. Charles Francis Adams has made the same discovery and in 
his recent volume "Studies Military and Diplomatic" has attacked 
the historians with even greater severity and rewritten in his usual 

Reprinted &om Proceedings American Philosophical Society, Vol. li., igtz. 



5i FISHER— MYTH-MAKING PROCESS IN [April i8, 

trenchant, luminous and captivating style, a considerable portion of 
that history. His essays on the military strateg}' of the Revolu- 
tion are contributions of permanent value, refreshing and ennobling, 
because they substitute truth and actuality for the mawkish sen- 
timentality and nonsense with which we have been so long nauseated. 

]\Iinor investigations like recent works on the Loyalists by Flick, 
Van Tyne, Ryerson and Stark, also Bartlett's " Destruction of 
the Gaspee," Judge Horace Gray's essay on the " Writs of Assist- 
ance," publications like the Hutchinson Letters, the Clinton-Corn- 
wallis Controversy, have of course helped to bring about this 
change. The general improvement in public libraries, in accessibil- 
ity to the old pamphlets and original evidence of all sorts, has also 
helped and led to a desire for knowledge of the actual events. 
Lapse of time, too, is no doubt having its effect in lessening the 
supposed inadvisability of letting all about the Revolution be know-n. 

Within the last two years in writing a life of Daniel Webster I 
had occasion to examine the original evidence of our history from 
the War of 1812 to the Compromise of 1850; and I found that it had 
substantially all been used in our histories of that period. There 
was no ignoring of it or concealment of it such as I had found when 
I investigated the original evidence of the Revolution. It is 
strange at first sight, that the history of our Civil War of 1861 
should 'have all its phases so openly and thoroughly exhibited, 
the side of the South as well as the side of the North, both fully 
displayed to the public, and that the greater part of the evidence 
of the Revolution should be concealed. But the circumstances of 
the Revolution were quite different. 

In the first place, the large loyalist party in this country in some 
places a majority, were so completely defeated, hunted down, ter- 
rorized, driven out of the country and scattered in Canada and 
various Briti.sh possessions, that to use a vulgarism they never 
" opened their heads " again. It is only in recent times that any 
one has had the face to collect their evidence and arguments from 
the original sources and publish it. For more than half a century 
after the Revolution no writer could gain anything but condemna- 
tion and contem]5t for mentioning anything about them. The sue- 



H 



4 . ft. WjaCiArtr^'lJCstt Co . 



lb. iD'll. 



'9'2-] HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 55 

cessful party in America wouU! not even vilify them, but ignored 
them and their doings as if they had had no existence. The object 
of this was to make it appear that the Revolution had been a great 
spontaneous uprising of the whole American people without faction 
or disagreement among themselves. In England, strangely enough, 
the loyalists were also ignored and nothing said about them. They 
were often suspected of being half rebels, "whitewashed rebels" 
as they were sometimes called. Those who fied to England were 
apt to be treated with more or less contempt. They were often 
regarded as mere objects of charity, "lick pennies" as one of them 
complained, or at best as mere provincials of neither social nor 
political importance. 

But at the close of our Civil War, the people of the Southern 
States remained in the country, were respected by the North as well 
as by the rest of the world, published their side of the controversy 
and again sent their representatives to Congress as they had done 
before the war. No one has as yet dared to falsify or conceal the 
facts of that history or turn it into myths and legends. 

In the second place, after the close of the Revolution, we were 
for a long time a very disunited country. It was very doubtful 
whether the States would be able to come together and form a na- 
tional government. Many thought that some of them might go 
back under British control. When a national constitution was at 
last adopted, it was regarded by the rest of the world and even by 
ourselves, as an experiment which very likely might not in the end 
succeed. In Europe, it was largely regarded as a ridiculous experi- 
ment. Our democratic ideas and manners were despised and our 
newness and crudeness contrasted with the settled comfort and re- 
finement of 'the old nations. We felt all this keenly. Our writers 
and able men struggled might and main to unite our people and build 
up a nation. They strove to give dignity and respect to everything; 
to make no damaging admissions, to let not the smallest fact creep 
out, that might be taken advantage of. It was, therefore, perhaps 
too much to expect that they would describe the factions and turmoil 
of the Revolution as they really were, the military absurdity of the 
British General Howe letting it go by default, the cruelty and perse- 



56 FISHER— MYTH-MAKING PROCESS IN FApril -.8. 

cution inflicted on the loyalists and their large numbers. So they 
described a Revolution that never happened and never could happen. 
A whoop and hurrah boys! All spontaneous, all united; merciful 
noble, perfect ; all virtue and grand ideas on one side, all vice, wick- 
edness, effeteness and degeneration on the other. 

That feeling, the boasting and the exaggeration were proper 
enough in one sense. It was certainly right to strive to build up the 
nation, and protect and dignify it. But one of the most curious 
instances of the way the feeling worked was Jared Sparks' edition 
of the letters of Washington. Sparks was the President of Har- 
vard College, a man of intellect and learning, the author of an 
interesting collection of biographies of American worthies. He 
felt that he must exalt Washington, and so he rewrote cjuite a num- 
ber of the Washington letters, struck out such expressions as such 
and such a thing would " not amount to a flea bite," altered some 
statements about religion and God, left out whole passages, espe- 
cially those in which Washington told of cashiering officers for 
cowardice. Sparks was an interesting instance of the myth-making 
process used for pious purposes, for by magnifying Washington in 
this way he, no doubt, sincerely believed that he was helping reli- 
gion and the youth of the country by setting up an example of per- 
fection. Even Washington Irving, as j\Ir. Adams points out 
("Studies Military and Diplomatic," pp. 166-168), was not a little 
inclined to myth-making. Irving gave us some excellent historical 
work, for which we should be grateful ; but he could not altogether 
escape the taint of his time. 

Jared Sparks was un(|uestionably a man of integrity but he was 
carried away by the feeling of making a good showing by manufac- 
turing Washington into theoretical perfection. I do not suppose 
tiiat he for one moment realized that he was doing what very closely 
resembled some things for which persons in lower walks of life 
are sent to jail. He had a rude awakening when W. B. Reed dis- 
covered the whole imposture and published the original letters with 
the Sparks improvements side by side. But the exposure did little 
good ; for similar methods, and evidence-ignoring on a much larger 
scale, were used through whole volumes of so-called history. 



>9i2.] HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 57 

It is interesting in this connection to remember that Charles 
Thomson, the Secretary of the Continental Congress during the 
Revolution, wrote a history of that event; and his position and 
acquaintance with leading characters must certainly have given him 
valuable information. But he burnt the manuscript, giving as a 
reason that its publication would give too much offense to persons 
still living. He wished to quiet down everything, forget the horrible 
scenes, controversies and factions, and build up the country. Cer- 
tainly a most laudable motive ; but we must not now in these days 
be misled by it and accept as history all those standard volumes 
which when analyzed are nothing but concealment of actual facts 
for the sake of helping the nation. 

We must hasten, however, to the third cause of the trouble, and 
that was that the first history of the Revolution which all the others 
have followed and copied was an English whig partisan argument. 

The English whig party were in a peculiar position during the 
Revolution, with a rebellion on hand that seemed likely to rend 
the British empire asunder. They were in a very small minority, 
overwhelmingly outvoted on every subject. They adopted as their 
policy for the American War, the principle, or rather supposition, 
that if the troops were all withdrawn from the colonies and no at- 
tempt made to coerce them, the Americans would voluntarily sub- 
mit to be ruled by England and form an ideal spectacle of uncoerced 
colonies willingly and gladly remaining under the tutelage of their 
mother. 

It was a beautiful ideal as developed by the great whig orators, 
Burke, Chatham and Barre, illustrated from history and art, and 
dignified by passionate appeals to sentiment and manhood. Their 
speeches have become classics of the English language and have been 
recited for a hundred years by our school boys. Those orations 
with others by the lesser whig lights to be found in the parliamen- 
tary debates, together with the whole whig policy, were, of course, 
very acceptable to our people. The whigs were continually asserting 
that our people did not want independence ; they besought mild and 
conciliatory measures for us ; they attacked the tory measures ; and 
so far as they succeeded in checking in this way the tory policy of 
coercion, they aided us in obtaining independence. 



68 FISHER— MYTH-MAKING PROCESS IN [April i8, 

This history of the Revohuion from the whig point of view was 
written almost as rapidly as the events occurred, not only in the whig 
speeches, but in the Annual Register, an important publication of 
that time, still in existence, which summed up the political and 
diplomatic occurrences of the year both at home and abroad as they 
affected England. After the Revolution was ended and people 
began to think of writing an account of it, they found that it was 
the easiest thing in the world to do. Just get down the volumes of 
the Annual Register and there it all was for each of the seventeen 
years of the long controversy; each year by itself clearly and co- 
gently written; for the Annual Register had employed the great 
whig orator Edmund Burke to write these summaries every year. 
Burke was very careful with his dates, facts and statements so far 
as he chose to go and the Register enjoyed a high reputation in that 
respect. But the statements were all whig statements ; no others 
were admitted ; no facts unfavorable to the whig line of policy were 
admitted ; and every fact and statement was given the tinge and 
leaning of the whig policy. 

Those summaries running for seventeen years in the Register 
and the speeches of the whig orators were the material that the 
early historians of the Revolution used. Gordon, who wrote the 
first important and widely read history of the Revolution, copied 
page after page of the Register verbatim and says so in his preface 
to the first English edition. Those whig speeches and summaries 
gave the tone, the point of view and the limitations, and fi.xed them 
so rigidly that the great mass of evidence outside of those limita- 
tions has always been rejected; and when now obtruded on the pub- 
lic in even the mildest form, is received with staring and sometimes 
indignant incredulity. 

I am certainly very glad that the whigs adopted the line of 
policy that has been described. It was a great help to our cause; 
and it may have been good for the whig party or at any rate the 
best ihey could do under the circumstances. But to make that mere 
partisan position the basis and limitation for writing history is the 
rankest alisurdity that was ever heard of. Even as a political policy, 
the whig plan was a mere dream that could never be carried out in 



1912] HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 59 

practice. It was a legal and political impossibility and contrary to 
common sense. There was no such thing, there never was and there 
never will be such a thing as a community of Americans voluntarily 
submitting to the absolute supremacy of a parliament three thousand 
miles across the Atlantic. The tory majority tried a large part of 
the whig plan without success. They tried conciliation and found 
it a failure. They repealed the stamp act and the paint, paper and 
glass act very early in the controversy. They made no attempt to 
enforce either act with troops and had scarcely any troops in the 
country at that time. But the colonists, instead of becoming more 
submissive, felt more conscious of their power and became more 
independent. In 1778 the tories oflfered to repeal practically all 
objectionable legislation and make a compromise that would be 
just short of absolute independence; but the American patriots 
rejected this offer as they had rejected all other attempts at concilia- 
tion that did not offer absolute independence. 

If the whigs had been in power during the revolution there is 
no reason to suppose they would have been any more successful 
ifl conciliating the Americans than were the tories ; and it is probable 
that they would not even have attempted to put their idealism into 
practice. In the Canadian rebellion of 1837 they were in power, 
but they suppressed that rebellion with a high hand, hanged and 
banished the ringleaders, did not withdraw troops, and did not rely 
on voluntary submission. Their idealism in the Revolution was 
mere minority eloquence. It is one thing to advocate an ideal theory 
when you are in a hopeless minority and not responsible for results, 
and quite another thing to put such a theory in force when you are 
in the majority and in power which you wish to retain. 

The whig partisan policy is such a narrow point of view for 
writing history, that in order to maintain it and stay within it you 
must leave out of consideration and either conceal or ignore more 
than half the evidence and testimony of the eye witnesses and con- 
temporary documents of the Revolution. You must write the Revo- 
lution merely as the English whigs saw it, or professed to see it for 
party purposes. You must omit large masses of evidence that have 
been found in both America and England. You must ignore the 



60 FISHER— MYTH-MAKIXG PROCESS IN [April 18. 

testimony and arguments of the tories who from the point of view 
of impartial liistory are entitled to exactly the same consideration 
as witnesses as the whigs and patriots. You must ignore and vilify 
the testimony and arguments of the loyalists, who, if history is to be 
anything more than falsehood agreed upon, are entitled to exactly 
the same- consideration as witnesses as the patriots, whigs and tories. 

The whig point of view ignores completely the whole mass of 
evidence coming from the tories and the loyalists and does not accept 
all the evidence coming from the patriots. As the whigs were al- 
ways trying to show that the patriot party in America did not really 
want independence, but would be content with a compromise, they 
accepted no evidence that did not accord with that view. 

All through the Revolution the English whigs sneered at the 
loyalists, rejected all their statements, and were only a step behind 
the patriots in condemnation of them. It seems now a little con- 
temptible, this merciless whig condemnation of the loyalists who 
were trying to save the same empire which the whigs professed to 
have a remedy for saving. At the close of the Revolution, when 
the treaty of peace was signed, a section of the whig partv shifted 
their ground, took up the cause of the loyalists and attacked the 
ministry for making a treaty of peace which abandoned the loyalists 
to the mercy of the patriots. 

If you confine yourself to the whig limitation, you must not only 
ignore the great mass of information about the loyalists, but you 
must also ignore the military strategy of the war, scarcely noticed 
in our histories, but, as Mr. Adams shows, almost as important 
and interesting as the campaigns of Napoleon. 

The great controversy over General Howe's motives and im'litary 
conduct fills the first three years of the evidence of the war apjiear- 
ing in pamphlets, letters and charges against him and finally, in the 
voluminous evidence of his trial or investigation bv I'arliament. 
This great mass of evidence about Howe, very familiar to the people 
of that time, but unnoticed in our histories, gives us entirely new 
views and ideas of the situation. Another controversy carried on 
with the greatest acrimony between Clinton and Lord Cornwallis 
and also unnoticed in our histories, gives us an entirely new un- 
derstanding of the last three years of the war and its final is.sue. 



•9I2-] HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Gl 

Then there is much unused evidence about the actual position and 
services of France, not to mention Spain, and Holland. There are 
scores of old pamphlets which show the actual arguments ex- 
changed between the two countries on the constitutional power of 
Parliament in the argumentative period of the contest 1764-1774. 
There is the evidence about the violation of the navigation and 
trade laws, and about the admirality courts. All this evidence our 
standard histories fail to bring to light and explain. 

They give us no adequate understanding of the dozen acts of 
Parliament which the patriot colonists wished repealed. They 
never explain the full meaning of that demand of the colonists that 
England should never keep soldiers in a colony in time of peace, 
except by the consent of the colony, that England should not change 
or amend a colonial charter except by the consent of the colony. 
They do not even explain, they hardly even notice the demand by 
the patriots that Parliament should have no authority in the colonies 
or in relation to them except to regulate ocean commerce. They do 
not explain what the colonists meant when they said that they were 
willing to be ruled by the king alone. They do not compare these 
demands with the modern British colonial system to see whether 
any of them have, in modern times, been accepted by England as 
proper methods of colonial government. 

The most curious fact about the whig and Annua! Register 
method of writing our history is that in the end the English tories 
accepted it as the safest and best way of describing the old contro- 
versy. Most of the evidence relating to the Revolution was a very 
serious matter for Englishmen to handle, no matter whether their 
political views were tory or whig. England still had colonies, ex- 
pected to have more and to go on building up a great and obedient 
imperial empire. The whigs in their way believed in that empire 
as much as the tories and gladly accepted all the profits and advan- 
tages of it. Would it be wise for English writers, whether tory, 
whig or " impartial," to tell the English people that the American 
patriot party had from the beginning hated and detested what is to 
this day the foundation principle of the British empire, namely, the 
supremacy of Parliament as absolute and omnipotent in every colony 



62 FISHER— MYTH-MAKING PROCESS IN [ApHi "8, 

as it is in London ; that they despised coloniaHsm from the bottom 
of their hearts; that they believed it to be unmanly and degrading 
political slavery, and that the only definition of a colony that they 
accepted, was one which described a community like the old Greek 
colonies, sent out by a mother country with the intention that it 
should become absolutely independent, and that the mother coun- 
try's only duty towards it would be to orotect it from other nations 
and guarantee its independence. 

That an English writer should describe the Revolution in this 
way and be compelled to admit that the American patriots had 
broken away from the British empire because they despised its foun- 
dation principle, was, and is, a great deal to expect of English nature 
or of human nature. Neither English tories nor whigs care to de- 
scribe the Revolution as it occurred ; and it is hardly fair to expect 
them to do it. Why should they deliberately excite their present 
colonies and their great and profitable East Indian empire to rebel 
and justify their rebellion. Is it not evidently much better to 
say with the whigs that the American patriots dearly loved 
England and the British empire; that they were contented, dutiful 
and obedient colonists ; that they were not only perfectly willing 
but anxious to remain in the empire and share its profits and 
glory of world wide con(|uest ; that their leaving the empire was a 
mere accident brought about by the blindness, stupidity, and wicked- 
ness of a certain tory ministry, or, as some later writers have put it, 
by the blindness, stupidity and self-will of the King. George III., 
who of himself, against the wishes of his ministry, parliament, and 
the English people, drove the Americans out of the empire, when 
they were perfectly willing to stay within it. 

The first important history of the Revolution after Burke's 
annual summaries in the Register, was a four-volume work by 
John Andrews, LL.D., published in 1786. It followed the same 
lines as P.urke's essays in the Annual Register, except that it gives 
much space to stating both sides of the arguments in Parliament, 
but in such a tiresome, verbose way, that it is almost unreadable. 
Andrews had no historic ability, no interpretative power; was a 
mere dull chronicler and summarizer. He cites no evidence or au- 



'912.] HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION'. 63 

thorities, and keeps on the safe side of mere ordinary dates and 
events. The great mass of actual evidence; the position, the doings, 
the arguments of the loyalists, the causes which led to the Revolu- 
tion, the real conditions in America, the navigation and trade laws, 
the strategy of battles, the controversy over General Howe's conduct 
of the war, his trial before Parliament, the Qinton-Cornwallis con- 
troversy over the final strategy — these and a host of other actuali- 
ties, one would never learn anything about from the pages of John 
■Andrews, LL.D. 

In 1787 a very ambitious and laborious account of the Revolu- 
tion appeared by the Rev. William Gordon, an English whig, and 
Congregationalist minister, who had come out to Massachusetts 
early in the difficulties and remained with us all through the Revolu- 
tion, interviewing generals and prominent men, visiting battlefields, 
examining private papers and public records and collecting notes and 
materials. When the war ended he returned to England and wrote 
his history. 

He was not altogether liked in America. John Adams said he 
talked too much, and that his historj' in attempting to favor both 
sides was a failure. But he seems to have been trusted with im- 
portant papers and he was unquestionably very painstaking and 
accurate. Many of the papers which he examined in manuscript, 
notably in the year 1775, have been published in the American Ar- 
chives and confirm his statements. No one has given us a better 
detailed contemporary account of the Battles of Fort ^Mifflin and 
Red Bank. But he had no historic ability. He follows the Annual 
Register as a basis for a great part of his information, copying 
from it without changing the language, and announces in his preface 
that he has done so. He stays cautiously within the whig limits of 
safety already described. The remaining British colonies would not 
be stirred to rebellion by anything he says. But as a chronicler who 
lived amidst the events of the Revolution, his work is of some value 
as a piece of original partisan evidence. 

In 1789 Dr. Ramsay of South Carolina, who had written about 
the Revolution, in his own State, brought out a general history of 
the Revolution, which strange to say, rejected in some respects the 



64 FISHER— MYTH-MAKING PROCESS IN lAprii .8, 

guidance of the whigs and the Annual Register and in this respect 
stands alone. He seems to understand that the dispute between 
America and England was irreconcilable and could never have been 
settled by conciliation. He does not regard England's conduct 
toward the colonies as a mere mistake of a ministry, nor did he 
regard it as the affair of the king, but as a deliberate movement of 
an overwhelming majority in Parliament heartily supported by the 
aristocracy, the county gentry and the ruling classes, to consolidate 
the empire and bring the colonies under stricter regulations. He 
showed that under the old system the colonists had grown accus- 
tomed to semi-independence and -now were bent on absolute inde- 
pendence. But his method of writing was so obscure and tedious 
and he gave himself so little room, that his book could never have 
much effect. 

Any influence he might have had was soon overwhelmed and 
forgotten by the historical works of a writer of the highest order of 
popularity, and in that sense and influence the ablest historian we 
have ever produced. Prescott, Motley and Parkman are mere chil- 
dren when compared with him. 

The truth is that Americans had no book about their great polit- 
ical events that was easy to read until 1800 when the Reverend 
Alason L. W'eems came to their rescue with his " Life of Wash- 
ington," followed by lives of Franklin and Marion. Parson Weems, 
as he was called, was. it is said, a preacher of large family and 
slender means, who had charge of a church in Mrginia near Mount 
Vernon. To support his family he became a travelling book agent 
for Matthew Carey, of Philadelphia. He w-rote books of his own 
and sold them in his wagon journeys through the country. He was 
ready with a sermon, an harangue, or a stump speech, wherever he 
could draw a crowd ; and he would then recommend his w-ares and 
sell them from his wagon. He played well on the fiddle and was 
in demand at social gatherings and dances. ?Tc must have been an 
entertaining fellow in his way and I should like to have seen him 
on some of his tours through the .south. 

For a generation and more, his books, especially his "Life of 
Washington," had an enormous sale and went through over forty 



>9i2.] HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 65 

editions. They were necessarily histories of the revohition. His 
ideas on that event readied every corner of the country and every 
class of life; and the publishers tell me his "Life of Washington" 
still sells. Reckless in statement, indifferent to facts and research, 
his books are full of popular heroism, religion and morality, which 
you at first call trash and cant and then, finding it extremely enter- 
taining, you declare with a laugh, as you lay down the book, what a 
clever rogue. 

It is impossible to refrain from quoting from him. He is a most 
delightful mixture of the Scriptures, Homer, Mrgi! and the back 
woods. Everything rages and storms, slashes and tears. At the 
passage of the stamp act " the passion of the people flew up 500 
degrees above blood heat." In battle Americans and English plunge 
their bayonets into one another's breasts and " fall forward together 
faint, shrieking in death and mingling their smoking blood." Here 
is his description of Morgan at the last battle of Saratoga. 

" The face of Morgan was like the full moon in a stormy night when she 
looks down red and fiery on the raging deep, amidst foundering wrecks and 
cries of drowning seamen; while his voice like thunder on the hills was heard 
loud shouting his cavalry to the charge." 

" Far-famed Brittanica," Weems says, " was sitting alone and 
tearful on her \\'estern cliff, while, with downcast looks, her faith- 
ful lion lay roaring at her feet." And we must have one more from 
his description of the Battle of the Cowpens. 

" As when a mammoth suddenly dashes in among a thousand buffaloes, 
feeding at large on the vast plains of Missouri ; all at once the innumerous 
herd, with wildly rolling eyes and hideous bellowings, break forth into flight, 
while close at their heels the roaring monster follows. Earth trembles as 
they fly. Such was the noise in the chase of Tarleton, when the Swords of 
Washington's cavalry pursued his troops from the famous fields of the 
Cowpens." 

It is in vain that the historians, the exhaustive investigators, the 
learned, and the accurate rail at him or ignore him. He is inimi- 
table. He will live forever. He captured the Ainerican people. 
He was the first to catch their ear. He said exactly what they 
wanted to hear. He has been read a hundred times more than all 
the other historians and biographers of the Revolution put together. 



66 FISHER— MYTH-MAKING PROCESS IN tAi.rii is. 

He fastened his methods so firmly upon the country that the learned 
historians must, in their own dull and lifeless way, conform as far 
as possible to his ideas or they will be neither read nor tolerated. 

Out of the social, genial, card-playing, fox-hunting Washington, 
Weems manufactured the sanctimonious wooden image, the Sunday 
school lay figure, which Washington still remains for most of us, in 
spite of all the learned efforts of Owen Wister, Senator Lodge and 
Paul Leicester Ford. Weems was a myth-maker of the highest rank 
and skill and the greatest practical success. Of the Revolution itself 
he made a Homeric and Biblical combat of giants, titans and mam- 
moths against the unfathomable corruption and wickedness of about 
a dozen dragons and fiends calling themselves King and Ministry in 
England. 

He goes back wholly to the whigs and the Annual Register. The 
people of England, everyone on that blessed island, except the dozen 
ministerial fiends, were, he assures us, a noble, kindly, gentle race. 
He knew them well ; he had lived among them when he studied 
theology ; and they did not make war on the Americans. They 
would not have thought of such a thing ; they disapproved of the war. 
As for the American colonists, though giants and mammoths when 
aroused, they were also a gentle people, most loving and obedient to 
the mother country, anxious to remain with her, had not war been 
cruelly made upon them. 

And why then was cruel war made upon them? Simply, says 
Parson Weems, because " the king wanted money for his hungry 
relations and the ministers stakes for their gaming tables or diamond 
necklaces for their mistresses." 

There it is in its crudest form, the ministerial explanation of the 
Revolution, the most popular, short, easy and practical ex]ilanation 
of the great event that could be devised. It reveals nothing about 
the real issue at stake between the two countries ; nothing about the 
question of the supremacy of Parliament or the other great principles 
involved. P.ut it pleased vast numbers of people because as ex- 
pressed by Weems, they could grasp it instantly; it appealed to their 
suspicions of what the effete monarchies across the Atlantic really 
were. Expressed in different language with a few political and 



■9"-^-] HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 67 

more refined ideas substituted for tlie diamond necklaces and liungry 
relations, it pleased the half loyalist element which still remained in 
the country, and it pleaseil a certain class among the patriots who 
wanted to be able to admire England, her literature, her laws, her 
social customs, the charming lives of her country gentry, the hedge 
rows and green fields, and the fashion of London. They could 
admire and love all these things, have social pleasures with distin- 
guished Englishmen, talk about the Anglo-Saxon race, its glories 
and conquests, and yet remain true Americans, because the Revolu- 
tion had been a mere ministerial war, a ministerial accident, uncon- 
nected with the rest of England and such an accident could never 
happen again. 

We might dispose of all the subsequent histories of the Revolu- 
tion by simply saying that they followed along in this short and easy 
method. Even Chief Justice Marshall in his Life of Washington 
published in 1804, though once or twice disposed to break away, trots 
along in the same old rut. 

In 1809 quite a popular history of the Revolution appeared in 
French, which went through twenty editions in Europe. It was 
written by Charles Botta of Northern Italy, who had been a surgeon 
in the French army, and was appointed by Napoleon on the commis- 
sion to govern the Italian republic he established. It was made up, 
the author himself tells us, from the Animal Register, other histories, 
the parliamentary debates and pamphlets. But it is all Annual Reg- 
ister and so dull that a modern reader has difficulty in getting through 
a single chapter. The American translation went through ten edi- 
tions. Adams and Jefiferson, who were still alive, praised it highly. 
The popularity of such a tedious compilation is hard to understand, 
unless it was that our people were pleased because it was a French 
and Italian defence of our Revolution and institutions. 

Hildreth's " History of the L^nited States," published in 1849, 
devoted parts of the third and fourth volumes to the Revolution. 
It was a carefully written work, in much better style than its prede- 
cessors, and is still pleasant to read, but was a conventional chronicle 
within the established lines. 

It was quickly followed by two other histories, one by Lord 



68 FISHER— MYTH-MAKING PROCESS IN l-^prii i8. 

Alahon and one by George Bancroft. Lord IMahon, afterwards Lord 
Stanhope, was a man of distinction in English poHtics and literature, 
founder of the National Portrait Gallery and closely associated with 
the amendment of the English copyright law and the Historical 
Manuscripts Commission. His " Llistory of England" from 1713 
to 1783 came out a volume at a time, between the years 1836 and 
1853. I" the last three of the seven volumes it touched upon the 
Revolution. It was the first account of that great event written in a 
style of any literary merit ; and Lord Mahon's style possessed great 
merit. Without the slightest attempt at the eloquence or rhetoric 
supposed by some to be necessary for history, he relies on mere 
clearness and aptness of words to convey the ideas of a very culti- 
vated and intelligent mind. Every page of it is interesting and is 
likely to remain so for all time. As a history of England it is full 
of information, especially of the prominent characters of the time; 
but as an account of our Revolution, it touches only the surface. He 
goes no deeper than to say that the loss of the colonies was a mere 
accidental piece of foolishness on the part of the ministry ; and 
having started with that position his pleasing narrative keeps within 
the lines of safety. 

In 1852 Bancroft's "History of the L^nited States" reached the 
Revolutionary period. It had been coming out a volume at a time 
since 1832. Bancroft was of Massachusetts origin and studied in 
Germany where, perhaps, he over-educated and over-Germanized 
himself. He traveled extensively, met distinguished men, became 
Secretary of the Navy and founded the Naval Academy at Annap- 
olis. He was also minister from the L^nited States to England and 
to Germany. It was a splendid experience and one would naturally 
expect from him something of broader gauge than his very cramjied, 
and bitter parisan account of tlie Revolution. 

It was the most violently partisan and timorously defensive his- 
torv of the Revolution that had ajjpeared. It was most cautiously 
written, with the greatest dread of the slightest admission, and with 
intense straining to make out a perfect case. Entirely devoid of 
candor, his fierce assaults on the character of Governor Hutchin- 
son, his assigniuent to him of every contemptible motive, his sweep- 



'9i.^-J HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 69 

ing condemnation and ignoring of the loyalists, and his omission of 
everything that did not support the English whig theory, have made 
his work more violently and narrowly one-sided than the partisan 
pamphlets of the period of which he was writing. 

His early volumes dealing with the discovery of the continent 
and the colonial period were much better than those relating to the 
Revolution. He restored to remembrance many important points in 
colonial history which, for want of an adequate account had been 
forgotten. But in the Revolution he became merely a scholarly 
Weems, carrying to exaggeration the worst features of Weenis and 
Botta. 

In his treatment of the Writs of Assistance, he declaims against 
the decision of the Massachusetts court allowing them, as contrary 
to the law and the constitution and cowardly subserviency to the 
British Government. But the decision was perfectly sound law, as 
Judge Gray of the Supreme Court shows in his admirable investi- 
gation of the subject; and until we recognize it as sound and inves- 
tigate from that point of view, we shall never get any farther in the 
history of the Revolution than mere demagogueism and declamation. 
In his volumes on the colonial period, Bancroft made in footnotes 
a number of citations to the original evidence, and some when he 
reached the Revolution. But those for the Revolution were very 
inadequate ; and in subsequent editions, for his work had a wide cir- 
culation, the citations for the Revolutionary part grew less and less 
until in the end they disappear almost altogether, and he gives no 
references for his innumerable quotations. His researches for mate- 
rial both in this country and in Europe are described by his friends 
as the most remarkable ever made. Documents and sources of in- 
formation closed to all others were, we are assured, open to him. 
But strange to say, we see no result of this in his published work. 
Nor can any subsequent investigator profit by his labors ; the won- 
drous and mysterious sources of information remain mysterious ; 
and many of his opinions are difficult to support with the evidence 
which investigators are able to find. 

This practice of not giving the evidence in footnote citations has 
been characteristic of all our histories and is, indeed, quite necessary 



70 FISHER— MYTH-MAKING PROCESS IN [April .8, 

and proper when the essential principle is that the greater part of 
the original evidence must be ignored. The habit of citation once 
begun, might be carried too far. 

Fiske, whose volumes on the Revolution have been published 
since the Civil War, makes no citations of the original evidence. 
Possibly he has forestalled criticism in this respect by the statement 
in the preface to his illustrated edition, that his work is a mere his- 
torical sketch. But it is two volumes containing some seven hun- 
dred pages, confident and positive in tone. For the sources of his 
material he refers us to Winsor's "Hand Book of the Revolution," 
and the notes of the " Narrative and Critical History of America." 
But he might just as well have referred us to the card catalogues of 
the public libraries. Such a general reference means nothing; and a 
very large part of the material contained in Winsor's " Hand Book " 
and in the " Narrative and Critical History " is made up of com- 
mentaries on the Revolution, v^'hich are becoming more and more 
numerous as time goes on. We have not yet learned in this country 
to distinguish sharply between the original evidence and the subse- 
quent commentaries. Our histories are usually written from the 
commentaries which are numerous, more accessible, more full of 
suggestion of all sorts, and easier to write from and understand than 
the original evidence. 

riske's account of the Revolution was, however, superior to all 
previous histories because it contains practically all that Piancroft 
and the rest contain much better expressed. It would be difficult to 
improve on Fiske's style of writing for clearness, beauty and read- 
ableness. Bancroft attempted the old-fashioned rhetorical style, 
which, in his hands, ran to turgidity and bombast. Oratorical dig- 
nity, the style that has been so often applied with success to Greek 
and Roman history, is probably inadequate, in any hands, to the 
economical, legal and constitutional, the prosaic, plebeian and demo- 
cratic struggle, which took place in America. Lord Mahon's style 
was far better than the classic oratorical ; and Fiske's is the best of all. 

Fiske was an extreme admirer of Gladstone, the English liberal 
party, its predecessor the whig party, and the whole system of the 
British empire. At almost every step he brings in this admiration 



'912.] HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 71 

for England; " her glorious records of a thousand years," and her 
dominion "on which the sun shall never set." If Gladstone had 
been alive in 1776 he and Washington would have settled the whole 
difficulty amicably, the English speaking race would not have been 
divided, and the United States would in some wonderfully sweet 
way have remained British colonies and part of the British empire, 
the great civilizer of the world. That is the keynote of his history; 
and it is all written within that limitation. No one has so glorified 
and enlarged the old whig and Annual Register idea. 

He limits himself and narrows his point of view still more by 
assigning the obstinacy of the king and his love of personal govern- 
ment as the cause of all the difficulty. The king deceived and forced 
the ministry. Parliament and the English people, and kept them 
deceived and forced during eleven years of argument and eight years 
of war. 

This one-man explanation of great political events is a cheap and 
easy historical device of very wide application. It is very dramatic 
and from a literary point of view, very telling and interesting. Fiske 
varies it and makes it more dramatic by assuring us that the person 
who put the wickedness into the head of George III. was Charles 
Townshend. 

That is a very pretty and interesting touch, to have Alephistoph- 
eles whispering in the ear of the one man. Botta, who also had 
the one-man idea, said that the devil who did the whispering was 
Lord Bute. And, indeed, the devil might be varied indefinitely, 
because there were so many people suggesting those ideas at that 
time. The editor of the Boston Gacctte may have been the devil ; 
for Townshend's main idea can be found in the pages of that journal 
long before Townshend promulgated it. If ]\Ir. Fiske and his fol- 
lowers will admit that there were many million devils comprising the 
majority of the Parliament and people of England together with the 
loyalists in America all whispering and some talking very loud for 
the encouragement of George III., the one-man theory will become 
comparatively harmless. 

If modern comprehensive investigation aided by improved libra- 
ries and collections has established anything, it is that the prominent 



72 FISHER— MYTH-MAKING PROCESS IN [April i8, 

or great individuals, while undoubtedly valuable, are more apt to be 
the results and outcome of political movements than the causes of 
them. The Revolution was a world movement forced on by the 
thoughts of millions of people. Its beginnings extend far back of 
1764, and George III. merely swam in the current. In the face of 
all the accumulated evidence of its workings, to assign the responsi- 
bility for it to one man may do well enough for eulogistic biography 
or oratory ; but is hardly admissible in history, if history is to be any- 
thing more serious than the latest novel. 

Lecky's "History of England in the Eighteenth Century" of 
course touches slightly on our Revolution and here we certainly have 
a man of strong intellect dealing with the subject. As might be 
expected he kicks over the traces and refuses to be bound by the 
ridiculous limitations of the school of Bancroft and Fiske. We find 
him stating the point of view of the loyalists, describing their large 
numbers and the factious turmoil of the times with that refreshing 
boldness, impartiality and instinctive love of truth which have made 
the author of the "History of Rationalism in Europe" one of the 
heroes of civilization and a terror to ecclesiastical humbugs. He 
cites his authorities in footnotes like a real historian ; he deals largely 
with the original authorities ; and one can learn more about those 
authorities in his brief account than from all previous histories of 
the Revolution put together. Unfortunately, however, he deals with 
our Revolution only incidentally, touching on it and coming back 
to it again farther on. To have gone into it thoroughly would have 
thrown his work out of proportion. His sound method, therefore. 
does not have chance and space enough to bring to the surface all 
that should be brought. 

In recent years another history of the Revolution, not yet com- 
pleted, but very voluminous, by Sir George Otto Trevelyan, has been 
appearing in England, a volume at a time. Mr. Trevel\-an is remem- 
bered for his admirable "Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay," pub- 
lished nearly forty years ago and for his subsequent life of admira- 
tion of Charles James Fox, the brilliant whig orator in Parliament at 
the time of our Revolution. The life of Fox treated only of that 
statesman's early years; and in his preface to the history Mr. Treve- 



■9>2] HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 73 

lyan explains that he finds he can write the rest of Fox's life only 
by writing a history of the American Revolution about which Fox 
so often spoke in Parliament. 

It hardly accords with an American's idea of the dignity of that 
event to see it regarded as mere illustrative material for the biogra- 
phy of a very reckless and insolvent gambler, who, however able he 
may have been as a minority speaker in Parliament, and however 
interesting he may still be to all of us, was by no means the most 
effective statesman England has produced. Our sense of proportion 
is somewhat outraged by the exaltation of the gambler through six 
volumes of the American Revolution, with more to come. 

At the same time it must be confessed that from a literary point 
of view, and in Mr. Trevelyan's skilful hands, the sacrifice of his- 
tory to an overestimate of a picturesque character keeps his readers 
interested and amused. The volumes are full of anecdote, remi- 
niscence, political and literary gossip of the intellectual sort; and the 
best parts of the work are the descriptions of English life and con- 
ditions in that age. The diffuseness of the style seems to an Amer- 
ican less suitable to history than Fiske's matchless brevity and ease, 
and it is far inferior in intellect, keenness and humor to the style of 
Mr. Charles Francis Adams. But Mr. Trevelyan is a delightful 
master of telling idioms, and clever phrasing, which have placed him 
where he is in English literature. 

He is a distinguished member of the English liberal party and 
this with his natural sympathy for that party's predecessors, the old 
whigs and for his picturesque gambler, combined with the necessity 
for not saying anything to impair modern British control of colonies, 
forces his book into the most narrow form of the Weems minis- 
terial explanation. 

As an attack upon the tory ministry of that period, nothing prob- 
ably will ever equal the accumulated force, the massing of details, 
the sweeping condemnation and the charm of language of Air. Treve- 
lyan's work. The unfortunate ministry is overwhelmed and buried 
under a mass of disapprobation that exceeds in weight and volume 
all that Fox and all that all the other whig orators ever said against 
them. Every fact, every inference, every delicate insinuation that 



74 FISHER— MVTH-MAKING PROCESS IN lApril .8, 

lapse of time, historical perspective and the labor of years can bring 
together, is licaijed upon them. Their depravity, malignity, and stu- 
pidity are unspeakable, especially when contrasted with the enlight- 
ened virtue and perfection of Fox and the whigs. It is perfectly 
obvious that the American colonies were lost merely by the peculiar 
circumstances of the cruelty and absurdity of this extraordinary min- 
istry, the like of which in infamy has never been known before or 
since. That is all there is in the American Revolution : and it is also 
quite evident that if the plans of Fox and the whigs had been carried 
out those affectionate and long-sufifering colonists who dearly loved 
the British empire would have remained in it in some ideal and 
friendly relation, which is not definitely described. 

Mr. Trevelyan is not impressed by the difference between the 
original contemporary evidence and the subsequent innumerable 
commentaries or secondary authorities. He cites one as readily as 
the other; and his investigations into the original evidence appear 
to have been very moderate. He ignores the greater part of it. 
The secondary authorities suit him better, because they support the 
ministerial explanation. Except for the descriptions of English 
life and manners, his work is largely made up from the commenta- 
tors. It is melancholy that a man of so much talent should sur- 
render himself body and soul to this old stupidity of forever re- 
writing the Revolution from the accumulating opinions of commen- 
tators, which move farther and farther away from the evidence ; 
and now Mr. Trevelyan's six or a dozen volumes must be thrown 
into the mass to be re-hashed for another progress away from the 
original evidence. 

Within the last year or so, however, there has appeared an Eng- 
lish history of the Revolution by the Rev. Mr. Belcher, which shows 
a most decided familiarity with the original evidence and an equally 
decided determination to jump out of the old whig and .innual Reg- 
ister rut. He is the first Englishman since Lecky's time that has 
been willing to admit, that there is a great mass of loyalist evidence. 
He gives his book an entirely correct title and calls it " The First 
American Civil War." He is rather an interesting and clever phrase- 
maker, after tlie manner that has been popular in England for some 



191=.] HISTORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 75 

time. But he runs on too much into mere pohtical gossip, unrelated 
details, and his book, in consequence, lacks logical sequence ; an 
inevitable defect, some will say, in a man of religion. But no matter 
about that, and no matter about his taking a very John Bull point 
of view, and safeguarding John's face and colonial possessions. He 
has jumped out of the old rut. He is in the original evidence ; and 
for that heaven be praised even if he only flounders in it. 

Since the above paragraph was written my attention has been 
called to an article in Blackwood's Magazine (March, 1912, p. 409). 
attacking with very considerable severity and ridicule the absurdity 
of continuing to write the history of the American Revolution 
from the narrowness of the old whig point of view. It is mere 
" senseless panegyric," the writer says. As a piece of history " it 
belongs to the dark ages;" it represents the views of the desperate 
whigs which will never again be expressed by a serious historian. 

Why be so scared and timorous about the original evidence, and 
why conceal it. After the first plunge and shock of the cold water 
is over, you will enjoy it. The real Revolution is more useful and 
interesting than the make believe one. The actual factions, divisions, 
mistakes, atrocities, if you please, are far more useful to know about 
than the pretense that there were none. The real patriots who hated 
colonialism and alien rule in any form and who were determined to 
break from the empire no matter how well it governed them, are 
more worthy of admiration than those supposed " aflfectionate colo- 
nists," who, we are assured, if they had been a little more coddled by 
England, would have kept America in the empire to this day. 

There has recently been some discussion in the newspapers on 
the hopelessness of all efforts to make good plays or even good novels 
out of the scenes of our struggle for independence. Why should 
our Revolution, it is asked, be so totally barren in dramatic incident 
and dramatic use and some other revolutions so rich in that use. 
May it not be because our Revolution has been so steadily and per- 
sistently written away from the actual occurrences, that novelists and 
play writers when they search for material find a scholastic, academic 
revolution that never happened and that is barren of all the traits 
of human nature. 



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